Thursday, September 28, 2006

Collaboration among USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley and Italian university finds strong mental link between actions and words. The brain’s premotor cortex shows the same activity pattern when subjects observe an action as when they hear words describing the same action, the study’s authors said.

HEIDELBERG, Germany, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Scientists in Germany say they have successfully teleported the combined quantum state of two photons.

That achievement is said to be the first for a composite system, and the researchers say their approach could lead to new ways to harness quantum effects for communication and computational purposes.

A quantum-mechanical system is characterized by a set of properties that can exist in certain possible states. For example, one property of a photon is polarization, the state of which can be horizontal, vertical or a mixture of the two. Quantum teleportation transfers the state -- in this case of the polarization -- of one object to another, which can be an arbitrary distance away.

Teleportation does not transfer energy or matter, the scientists noted.

Brain prosthetics. Telepathy. Punctual flights. A futurist's vision of where quantum computers will take us.

Science fiction, right? Sure - just like satellites, moon shots, and the original microprocessor once were. To scientists on the quantum computing frontier, this scenario is conservative.

"The age of computing has not even begun," says Stan Williams, a research scientist at Hewlett-Packard. "What we have today are tiny toys not much better than an abacus. The challenge is to approach the fundamental laws of physics as closely as we can."

The word "biometrics" is derived from the Greek words 'bios' and 'metric' ; which means life and measurement respectively.There are basically two types of biometrics:1. Behavioral biometrics 2. Physical biometrics

There are many examples of biometrics being used or considered in Federal, State, local, and foreign government projects. One use is to provide robust authentication for access to computer systems containing sensitive information used by the military services, intelligence agencies, and other security-critical Federal organizations. Physical access control to restricted areas is another key application.

Biometric system:

Face Multimodal

Fingerprint / Palm Print Retinal

Hand and Finger Geometry Vein

Handwriting Various/Others

Iris Voice/Speaker

Israeli-developed system:The Israeli-developed system combines questions and biometric measurements to determine if a passenger should undergo screening by security officials.

The trial of the Israeli-developed system represents an effort by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration to determine whether technology can spot passengers who have "hostile intent." In effect, the screening system attempts to mechanize Israel's vaunted airport-security process by using algorithms, artificial-intelligence software and polygraph principles.

An open access peer-reviewed journalEvolutionary Psychology is an open-access peer-reviewed journal that aims to foster communication between experimental and theoretical work on the one hand and historical, conceptual and interdisciplinary writings across the whole range of the biological and human sciences on the other. We also encourage reflective and exploratory essay reviews on books that merit extensive treatment.

Friday, September 22, 2006

One of the biggest challenges in robotics engineering is mimicking the human sense of touch. The ability to respond to texture and pressure is essential for delicate tasks, such as surgery. To that end, researchers have developed a new type of sensor that has a tactile sensitivity comparable to that of human fingertips--making it 50 times more sensitive than previously existing technology.

If you sometimes have difficulty reading other people's expressions and emotions, imagine how difficult it will be for silicon-brained robots. They will only ever be able to respond to us in an appropriate way if they can understand human moods.

Image of supernovae SNLS-03D3bb. This peculiar supernova does not fit the standard model for these enormous thermonuclear explosions

Scientists at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii have discovered a supernovae that does not fit the standard model for these types of extreme explosions. The results require scientists rethink their basic understanding of how stars explode as supernovae.

Ever wondered how some people can “put themselves into another person's shoes” and some people cannot? Our ability to empathise with others seems to depend on the action of "mirror neurons" in the brain, according to a new study.

Anousheh Ansari, has been officially named to the Soyuz TMA-9 primary crew. The first female spaceflight participant will launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on September 18, 2006 en route to the International Space Station (ISS) along with the Expedition 14 crew members: NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin.

Conference positions itself at the intersection of two worlds, namely, emerging nanotechnologies on one-side, and network/communication theory on the other side. The standing question that this conference will address is: What are the new communication paradigms that derive from the transition from micro- to nano-scale devices? The related degrees of freedom and constraints associated with these new technologies will change our notions about efficient network and system design. Nano-Net provides a multidisciplinary forum for the discussion of new techniques in modeling, design, simulation, and fabrication of network and communication systems at the nano-scale.

Monday, September 11, 2006

The brainchild of Alan Turing--often called the father of modern computer science--and Gordon Welchman, "bombes" such as the one the replica represents were used to decrypt more than 3,000 messages a day from the Nazi's Enigma machine.

It's No Game: IBM Uses PlayStation Chip For New SupercomputerIBM is working with Los Alamos to install the first phase of the latest supercomputer, dubbed Roadrunner, by next month. The hybrid machine will get a speed boost enabling it to break the petaflop barrier when the Cell processors are added to AMD's Opteron technology.

About Me

- I am so… submerged in His immense love… my being is God, not by simple participation, but by a true transformation of my being! My Me is God, nor do I recognise any other Me except my God Himself. -St. Catherine of Genoa